


that in springtime will grow

by courante



Series: migratory birds [1]
Category: Buzzfeed: Worth It (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Chinese Mythology & Folklore, M/M, Mutual Pining, Necromancy, New York City, Vampires, Various cameos of other Buzzfeeders, undead character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 11:31:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17621588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/courante/pseuds/courante
Summary: Steven isn't exactly the kind to go around picking strays off the street.This time is different, however.





	that in springtime will grow

**Author's Note:**

> happy february! posting this before lunar new year starts since we don't want dead people vibes over the actual holidays if you know what i mean!!
> 
> was talking to a friend when they mentioned the idea of a buzzfeed mdzs au, which is Extremely cursed. this... isn't it, but that's kind of where the idea started rolling, so i thought i'd mention it anyway. i love vampires and magic but also wanted to try something different and more familiar to me; something something spirits shifting based on different systems of magic vagueness. there's also a disappointing number of puns because i am not andrew, but there Is incredible cheesiness because i can't help it.
> 
> also putting out the usual disclaimer that this story is entirely fictional and does not represent the lives of rl people mentioned in any way. if there's anything i missed in the tags that should be tagged, please feel free to let me know!

“Can I just say,” Steven says absentmindedly as Andrew files away the medicine into their separate little cabinets across the room, “I keep wondering what being dead is like. Not like I _want_ to die, right now. Is it bad luck to say that today?”

“We’ve had this conversation approximately fifty-three times now,” Andrew deadpans without even looking up. Leaning forward, Steven watches him drop the lapis beads into a lacquered box, listening to them murmur as he shakes it softly. “And yes, I know what it’s like being dead.”

“ _Hey_ —”

He gets a bead expertly chucked at his forehead for his trouble.

 

 

Steven hadn’t been the one to revive Andrew; sometimes he wonders what would’ve happened, were he the one to have done it. No, he’d found Andrew disoriented and wandering the streets down in Elmhurst, not quite dead and not quite alive. Someone had called the cops on him, probably mistaking him for a vagrant, but Steven had gotten there first. The sirens had helped, but mostly it had been the unmistakable trail of magic left in the wake of his uncertain path.

A serendipitous occurrence, nothing more.

 

 

They greet their elderly neighbor as they make their way downstairs; she smiles and says something that sounds like _you two have a good time, alright_ in her heavy Teochew accent that Steven doesn’t quite catch the tail of. Look, he can barely keep up with Mandarin as is, though it’s been picking up a bit since he moved here.

Andrew’s all bundled up for the weather: scarves, hat, peacoat, the nines. His eyes are dull and cloudy, but the hat will help. Considering the ever-growing amount of onlookers each year, nobody’s going to notice some nondescript white dude with peculiar eyes in the middle of their merrymaking.

“You doing okay?”

“Mm. Yeah.” Andrew flexes his arm (and oh, how Steven wishes it were summer) experimentally, flinching at the popping noise that comes immediately after. “Okay, maybe not. Soon.”

“Don’t start eating until we’re there,” Steven warns him, patting his stomach with amusement; Andrew swats his hand away, shaking his head. Several pigeons fly low overhead, squawking as they descend upon the rubbish a few feet away, pecking at invisible crumbs. Cars honk and slow to a crawl, filling up the streets; with the diversions going on further down the road, it’s probably better that they walk.

“Let me guess,” Andrew counters as they start down the street briskly, “We’re gonna take the long way. And then you’re gonna get curry puffs. How’s _that_ fair, Steven?”

“I—you can eat those too!”

“You really have an in _curry_ able addiction to those.”

(Steven considers for all of half a second ripping his talisman off Andrew’s chest—but no, there’s too much scarf in the way and Steven’s a _virtuous upstanding citizen_ who isn’t here to desecrate the dead, no matter how stupid the puns inflicted upon him.)

 

 

Andrew had spent the following weeks after their meeting in relative silence, only breaking it to answer, vaguely, Steven’s hesitant questions. He hadn’t done anything wrong in being dead, and Steven didn’t really have the authority to _do_ anything to him. And because Steven considers himself a good person and really isn’t about turning someone in need away just as the weather starts to turn, Andrew stays.

(Andrew’s eyes are really nice, and so is his smile the one time Steven caught him looking at a stray cat, and so is his entire face, but that’s a different matter altogether.)

He doesn’t remember where he lived before (“Somewhere up north”), what era he’s from (after a few truly horrible puns Steven’s convinced Andrew’s either from the 80s or outer space), who brought him back, or what for. Only his name and blurry memories of snow, fragments of some European language that Steven can’t understand and that Andrew wouldn’t tell him. Maybe it’d been a mistake; he’d poked around the dozen or so younger kids who might’ve been fooling around in Queens, but none of them had fessed up to grave-digging. The mark that had been left had not been familiar, and by this point it had faded almost completely thanks to Steven’s own ministering.

The city’s not got much space for cemeteries anyhow, and for Andrew to be looking so fresh he’s almost certainly recently deceased, barring some hinky Captain America bullshit. The records at the library he could find are ill-kept and useless; the ones online, somehow even worse.

For the moment, Steven knows nothing about Andrew Ilnyckyj.

 

 

Outside, the bakery’s signage is laced with tiny red lanterns and all the trappings of the new year; inside, it’s warm and toasty with the unmistakable smell of meat buns and pastries. Andrew waits on one of the plastic chairs as Steven orders for both of them: piping hot puffs with yellow flaky crust, too-sweet green tea from the fridge despite the weather, some pork buns for Adam and Annie who judging from their exchanged texts might show up only for free food.

“This is really nice,” Andrew murmurs as he bites into his puff, chewing slowly. His moves his lips over the dense ridges in a strategic motion to instantly dry up Steven’s own mouth, or at least that’s what it feels like. In a concentrated effort to ignore his surroundings, Steven shoves his own puff into his mouth and turns to the dozen-odd unanswered texts waiting for him. “Hey.”

“Mm-mm?”

“You look like a hamster.” A pause. For a moment, Steven wonders if Andrew's going to poke him in the cheek; his hand twitching is a story untold. “It’s kinda cute.”

Steven chokes. Andrew pats him on the back, hard, sending crumbs everywhere. The guy sitting behind them gives Steven a disparaging look and moves away, muttering something unintelligible. “Oi, I could’ve _died_.”

Andrew wiggles an eyebrow at him as realization dawns. “Oh my god—”

“Now you know.”

 

 

“Do you _want_ to go back?” he remembers asking, an insensitive question if there’d ever been one. It’s one thing to wonder whether the dead just want to rest, and quite another to ask if they’d like to roll over in front of their faces. “I mean, like…”

“I'm still dead,” Andrew answers without missing a beat. He’s sitting on the couch, flipping through various Netflix originals at the speed of light. “Just…less than before. Shouldn’t _you_ know this?”

“I’m kind of a shitty necromancer,” Steven admits, looking down. It’s not the right term, not really, because there’s so much more to it than dealing with the dead, but he’s not sure Andrew would understand. _He_ doesn’t even really understand—most of what he does he’s figured out on his own along the way, far from his family back in Ohio, farther away still from the summer memories of Tanjung by the sea. All the bits and pieces from old books in a language he half-understands and building upon each mistake until the cogs start working as they should. It’s worked out okay, so far. “I was an engineer, before…”

“Before?”

“I wanted to help people,” he murmurs, seven parts embarrassed to three parts defiant. “There’s no reason not to use the talents you’re born with.”

Andrew looks out the window, at the grey skies and formations of geese crisscrossing the view. The picture nags at Steven’s insides, whispering _what are you gonna do, keep him here forever?_ It would be easy, at least in theory, were Andrew to ask. Take the remaining breath out of him at daylight, and he’d go back to…

“That’s a nice sentiment,” is all Andrew says. He shifts position and turns around, gazing back at Steven with those piercing green eyes that seem to take in anything and everything. “I mean it.”

 

 

Annie messages him over Line that they’ll be late picking up Rie, complete with a barrage of Gudetama stickers. Evan’s phone is switched off, and Inga texts him a few minutes later about the time her float comes out, but nothing else.

It’s fine, really. Steven glances over at Andrew, who’s more or less impervious to the cold, not even pretending to shiver a little for effect. If anything, he’ll have this sight to himself for a little longer.

“Trouble?” Andrew asks, as they wait at the stoplight. In the distance Steven could already hear the music and the shouts, familiar notes ringing in his ears.

“Nah, just traffic. Guess it’ll just be us two for a bit,” Steven replies, grinning and swiping at him in a mock hug; Andrew rolls his eyes and ducks away just as the lights turn green. “Come _onnnn_.”

“We’re in public,” Andrew begins, as if that’s ever stopped anything from happening. Not giving up, Steven bumps his elbow against Andrew’s, sidestepping the crowd beginning to gather at the other end of the crosswalk. “Steven—”

Andrew’s grasp on his wrist is ice cold, at once a reminder of his being and his hunger. But as Steven looks on in surprise and perhaps less apprehension than necessary, his eyes are inexplicably fond.

 

 

“Sometimes I think I’d like to remember,” Andrew says once, very quietly, over a hotpot gathering. He’d never been one for spicy food, he’d told Steven, but that had been before he realized his tongue could take so much more now that he’s dead. The words had slipped out of nowhere, surprisingly vulnerable, into the steam. “What happened, even if...you know.”

Steven’s about to ask if they’d be scared out of their wits once a dead man shows up at their doorstep before he realizes neither of them even know if Andrew’s family knows he’s gone. He might be a missing person with a bare-bones entry on NAMUS. Someone might be waiting for him at home, at work, from a hospital bed. Guiding departed spirits to move on is one thing, dealing with them in the flesh is another. His stomach churns, residual heat from the peppers, but also the fact that he’d never really thought to ask.

Maybe he’s doing this all wrong. Maybe there’s something else he’s not seeing.

“I could ask a friend to help,” Steven says, carefully, as Inga and Annie return from the restroom. And he does text Ryan later that night, after Andrew’s gone to bed outside but before it’s late enough in LA for him to be left on read.

He stands near the window, fiddling with the drawer beside his bed while he waits for a reply. Below and around the apartment, bright lights of the city twinkle back at him, spelling out the names of the stars, tallying past deeds from old brick. Steven closes his eyes, but there is no divining Andrew’s existence from the neon signs piled high into the sky. This might be his turf now, but the city and people like him—and the not-people, and those in-between and immaterial as the howling following the subway rumbling underfoot—don’t give up their secrets so easily.

 

 

Andrew doesn’t really do touch. Skin against skin. It’s an Andrew thing, yeah, but also a _jiangshi_ thing, and that’s kind of what he is now, maybe. He’s cold all over, even in summer, and takes the warmth from anything he touches. It’s kinda different from the movies, but the movies have never claimed to be right.

Everything spins for a moment, the brownstones lining the streets, the myriad flags drifting above their heads, the blood in his system slowing to a stop. The chill lingers on Steven’s skin even as Andrew lets go, tingling but not entirely unpleasant. It doesn’t take much out of him when he finds, rather unnervingly, that he doesn’t want it to stop.

And then Steven looks up, expectant, just in time for that flash of fear in Andrew’s eyes that he recognizes immediately: wrong time, wrong place.

“Hey,” he says, maybe a little too quickly, before Andrew could put the tension into words. “Honestly, I was kidding earlier, like, if you’re really that hungry, it’s—”

“Not here,” Andrew replies, looking down; his tone reads _not you_. The main event is still several blocks down the street, an entire world away. “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.”

“Andrew—”

“I mean it,” he says, almost pleading, a disjointed and unnatural sound coming from him. As if their roles had just been suddenly reversed, Andrew steps past him, looking straight ahead. The look in his eyes is one Steven’s never seen before, nor one he’d like to see again. “Let’s just...let’s just go.”

 

 

“You’re overthinking again,” Jen chides over Skype, in the middle of what’s ostensibly a work meeting. She’s got her head propped up against a cushion; Steven could see Kristin moving around in the kitchen barely visible above her head. “Don’t lie, I can spot that trademark Steven Lim frown—yep, it’s arrived.”

“I’m not overthinking! I just…”

She hums, tapping her lips and smiling. “There you go again.”

There’s no hiding it from her, even through a screen. Steven drags a hand down his face, shaking his head in silence. The room is unusually quiet tonight; Adam had taken Andrew out earlier for some art event down over in Tribeca. Something new, something good.

Something that Jen could clearly see as little thought bubbles crystallizing in his mind, because the next thing she says is, “You’re worried about Andrew, aren’t you.”

“I don’t know if this…” he closes his eyes. “If this is the right thing to do. Keeping him here. He doesn’t— I can’t find _any_ —”

“Whoa, whoa,” Jen interrupts, her dark eyes wide. She scoots closer to the screen, shaking her head. “Don’t have a heart attack on me, man. He said something about not wanting to be there?”

“No…”

“Anything about not liking you, specifically?”

“No, but—”

“Wanting to be laid to rest once and for all, to move on?”

“ _Jen._ ”

She exhales, shaking her head in that fond, exasperated way that Steven’s come to associate with an incoming razzing. “We’ve had this conversation before, Steven. He _likes_ spending time with you, dumbass.”

“Are those boys being stupid again?” Steven could hear Kristin snort in the background, among various noises of moving cutlery and bubbling liquids. “Tell him they just need to get it—”

“Kristin!” Jen swats her away, laughing. Her gaze flickers momentarily down to Steven’s neck, then back up; the entire exchange has the heat rising in his cheeks as she props a hand under her chin. Were she here she could probably hear the loud thumping in his chest clear as day, although her expression tells him it’s already a foregone conclusion. “Okay, so, Andrew’s not there. Which means he’s having a good time outside too, yeah? He hasn’t tried to eat you…”

Well.

Andrew’s usually the one making sure Steven’s eating well, if only because he gets so lost in his work sometimes. There would be spaghetti waiting for him on the table, takeout from that one Szechuan restaurant he has a veritable addiction to, and once homemade laksa that’d tasted absolutely nothing like the one his mother makes. Even then the smell of familiar spices lingered in the back of his head as he ate alone at the table, looking at the blond tufts of Andrew’s hair poking out from the armrest of their sofa.

“You don’t have to,” Steven’s told him before, apologetic, but Andrew just shrugs in that nonchalant way of his and avoids answering anything that comes after. Refuses to talk about how _he_ eats, how he’d slip out once every two weeks or so, and Steven would come back to seeing him refreshed and less languid. Doesn’t make eye contact when Steven casually relays news about a probable vampire roaming someone else’s turf, despite the only sinister occurrences being reports of strange lethargy.

And despite all persistent nudging, Andrew’s refused to sleep anywhere else but the sofa.

So.

“Nope,” Steven says, exhaling. “He hasn’t.”

Steven doesn’t talk about those times he’d gone to Andrew’s side at night during the low tides, murmuring the spells that would keep him in slumber—the dead, after all, do not sleep deeply. Doesn’t tell Jen about putting his hand on Andrew’s chest, just barely above the cold exposed skin. Thinks about something other than the lightheadedness that comes swift and unrelenting from channelling too much _qi_ into another body.

If Andrew had woken up recognizing what had transpired during the night during those times, if he’d noticed his cycles of hunger strangely slowing or Steven’s own tiredness after, he does not speak of it.

And if the look in Jen’s eyes is soft and knowing before she steers their talk back into actual work conversation, he momentarily leaves those thoughts in the back of his mind.

 

 

Downtown Flushing is already packed full of onlookers, jostling for the best position on the sidelines as the parade moves slowly down past the bank and the travel agencies, the public library, the closed supermarket and karaoke parlors. More people still pour out of the subway station decked out in wreaths of satin and paper flowers; at the one side of the closed-off street are camera crews on standby, straining their voices over the cymbals and the drums.

The mountain of people closes in, and Andrew sticks closer, if only for safety. There are, after all, others like them roaming the streets today.

In the distance Steven could see Inga’s float at the far end of the street, with the ridiculous-looking animal mascot waving at and flinging strawberry candy towards the crowds. In front of them are too many things to look at at once: men in flowing cheongsam holding up flags, children with balloons, the local Chinese schools and reading clubs with their banners. Lion dancers whirl past in red and gold to the beat of the drums, the ground vibrating with each step taken.

It’s overwhelming and a little too raucous for either of them, but it’s beautiful, too, something to chase out the old and welcome the new. Out of the corner of his eye Steven catches Andrew humming to the music, his lip curled upwards as the float sponsored by the local cat cafe comes rolling out. Today, there is enough energy among the living to pass around; Steven hears several people cough as they walk by, though it’s nothing in the constant stream of life on the narrow pavements. There’s something childlike in Andrew’s usually pensive face as he takes it all in, and in the mid-morning sunlight his eyes shine bright and lovely, despite everything.

_He likes spending time with you, dumbass._

Steven reaches for him, grasping his sleeve firmly. Andrew half-turns, somewhat alarmed, but doesn’t pull away. Had Steven thought about this better, had he not done the stupid impulsive thing where he acts before he talks, maybe this would’ve turned out differently.

Instead Andrew says, firm and quiet but clearly audible over the drums, “I know what you’ve been doing at night, Steven.”

"What?" And then, upon realization: "I, um."

In any other case this would’ve elicited laughter, some half-baked pick-up line exchanged at the worst possible moment. There’s no shying away from the truth now; Steven exhales, loosening his grip. The crowd surges as they move towards the sidelines, against the shadow of a large building. “How long?”

“You’re not exactly subtle about it.” Andrew’s words carry no heat, which might be good, or just spell the beginning of something worse. “I—”

“I don’t want you to think you’re um, inconveniencing me or anything,” Steven adds hastily, “I just, you…”

“Didn’t want me snacking on some innocent schmuck outside, so you’re gonna non-con force-feed me instead?”

“That’s—why’d you have to make it sound so disgusting,” Steven groans, feeling his cheeks flush; but he sees Andrew’s shoulders sagging in what looks like relief, and that in itself takes off some of the heat. Several teenagers run past, trailing colorful ribbons behind them and very nearly stepping on Andrew’s boots before he moves out of the way last-minute. “It’s just— it’s dangerous if you go to those places! There’s like— people who aren’t— welcoming.”

Andrew raises an eyebrow at his choice of words. “Steven, I can take care of myself.”

“I know that!”

This time, Andrew’s hands rest square on his shoulders; there’s a certain weight to them that has Steven swallowing the rest of his sentence. Here, and now, Andrew’s looking at him in a way that makes his heart want to stop beating. “But I need you to _believe_ that. That’s why I can’t—”

He stops, but Steven finishes the sentence for him. “—that’s why you won’t touch me, because you’re afraid you’ll hurt me.”

Fingers sink deeper into the fabric of his jacket as Andrew looks down at their shoes. It’s such an un-Andrew thing to do, the skirting around of conversations they maybe should’ve had months ago, after the initial shock of being revived had worn off and everything settled into a routine; somewhere between the jobs they’d take together at first warming into quiet familiarity and Steven starting to spend more time out of the house to hide away from his thoughts, the forlorn way Andrew sometimes gazes out at the sky or at the miniature willow in the living room. The looks thrown his way Steven’s always dismissed in a panic as for something else, for home.

“I didn’t want to lose anything else,” Andrew says, quietly, over the loudspeakers blaring behind them. He grimaces, words flowing like springwater. “I didn’t know if I could control myself—you know how this is, how...people like me are. I didn’t want to lose _you_.”

In the back pocket of his jeans Steven feels his phone vibrate; it must be one of the others trying to find them, lost in this sea of people and creatures and music and joy. He should answer, really. He should, but he doesn’t want to yet, not now.

Once upon a time he'd been afraid, of death and footsteps in the rain, of the eyes lurking on the dark, but these things have a habit of circling their way back into the light.

“Well,” Steven says finally, when Andrew looks up again as the music subsides in a brief lull. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily, Ilnyckyj.”

Andrew’s lips, after fighting off the scarves in the way, are cold—but not deathly so as Steven had imagined. Had he imagined this before? Whatever preconceived notions he has, whatever voices shouting _this is a bad, terrible, horrible idea_ in his head, all goes out the window once Andrew presses into the kiss, leans in and fluidly loops an arm around Steven’s neck to lock him into the embrace.

He notes that Andrew tastes like mugwort and smoky agarwood and heavy herbal fragrance. Familiar scents from the depths of his cupboards. And if there’s something less savory in the back of his throat—Steven finds it does not bother him as much as he thought it would. That would simply be information to file away for later, because in all the things he’s done before he’s never thought about kissing the dead and breathing life into them.

Though this time, Andrew takes nothing from him.

They break apart far too soon; someone hoots, but the noise is quickly swallowed up by the frantic music and people trying to get places, wherever they may go. Andrew looks at him with eyes only slightly wider than usual, which Steven considers a win, though he’s the only one who’s breathless. Surely his heart is beating fast enough for both of them. “Oh.”

“ _Oh?_ Oh my god, Andrew, that’s _it_?”

“What am I supposed to say, stupid,” Andrew retorts, a little petulant, a little embarrassed. Oh, this is fun now. Andrew’s never the one getting embarrassed, and it’s worth every agonizing waiting moment leading up to now to see him turn slightly pink under the sun. Steven didn’t even know he could do that, even when well-fed. He’d have to go home and do a little more research. “That was—nice. Is that what you wanted me to say?”

“Maybe, I dunno—shoot, I guess we’re really bad at this. Something more romantic.”

“Something more romantic.” Andrew’s got that expression on his face, the one where he usually starts drumming up for a pun or sarcastic comeback, but all that comes out, resigned and fond, is, “You’re unbelievable, Steven Lim. Remember what you asked earlier? About being dead?”

“Yeah? Wait, that’s not romantic _at all_ —”

Andrew interrupts him by taking his hand, inspecting it carefully like one would a block of gold. His gaze does not waver, though everything else in front of Steven’s eyes does, for a moment. “I guess it doesn’t matter when I feel alive around you.”

Steven stares at him, like he’s walked into this trap himself, back against the exposed brick as Andrew smirks, then really _smiles_ with his dimples showing, beauty mark crinkling beneath his eye. Andrew’s hand is still holding his, rough and solid and warmed up by the sun.

“That was so weak,” Steven manages, though it’s clear who’s won this battle.

Above their heads someone’s throwing confetti, red and gold and pink and blue showering down on the crowds below. Andrew shakes it out of his golden-brown hair, catlike, and leans into Steven again to allow more people to pass through. Today, beneath the winter sun of the new year, he is warm.

**Author's Note:**

> andrew pov sequel + possibly other drabbles coming whenever i have time


End file.
